I may have eluded a number of times over the past year of blogging that I suffer from chronic foot pain. This isn’t usually while I am walking, although I do get the occasional acute pain which passes as quickly and mysteriously as it arrived. It mostly occurs in the evening when I relax, and first thing when I get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes it is almost debilitating, I even keep a walking cane by my bed just in case I can’t actually walk in the mornings. Sad eh?
Compounding with that latent pain are the blister issues I have mentioned in the past couple of posts so I was starting to feel very sorry for my poor little feet (and they are disproportionally small compared to the rest of my lumbering self) and in they midst of my pity party it was suggested to me that I go see a podiatrist.
As I respect the person who gave the advice I trotted off a Podiatrist up the road from work and had a chat with a podiatrist there who had all sorts of interesting things to say about my feet.
First she poked, prodded, bent, and twisted my feet and knees, carefully taking notes. Then got me to walk up and down the hallway whilst videoing my walk so she could slow it down and analyse it. Then sat me down and told me that basically, my feet are weird.
Cast of my Feet: See how they roll outwards!! Weird
Apparently I have two conflicting bio-mechanical issues going on:
- Firstly (and I apologise but I can’t remember all the big words she used so I will just give you the gist of it) I have “hyper-mobile” knees. Which makes the lower leg (from below the knee) kind of angle outwards. This then translates to my feet having to roll inwards to compensate.
- Secondly, the bone along the inside of the foot which leads to the big toe actually sits lower than the rest of my feet, meaning that every step I take causes my feet to roll outwards to make contact with the floor.
Now, to those of you not paying attention, my feet are trying to roll inwards and outwards at the same time. This causes a lot of stress along the dorsal ridge of my feet through all the twisting, which at the end of the day, and first thing in the morning, hurts like the buggering.
To add to that, my toes don’t touch the ground! Apparently they are supposed to, who would have thought? So all my life I have been digging in with my toes to make them grip on the ground, which has done other stuff to my feet.
The up-shot of this is that I need orthotics. Which I now have, and besides starting off being a bit weird, are fantastic. I walk pretty much pain free. I notice now that my feet point forward when I walk (normally my right foot angels off to the side a bit), my knees don’t hurt when walking down stairs, and in the evenings I have dramatically reduced pain.
I have managed to get these just in time for the Milford Track walk so that has actually relieved some worry that I had about the walk.
1000+ km work-horses
I have also retired (on the advice of the podiatrist) my old walking shoes, which I had put through over 1000 km, so they have done me great service. And I was gifted a new pair of walking shoes for Valentine’s day to replace them. So I am very pleased with that.
New shoes! Love ’em
The podiatrist also cleaned up my feet of all the callouses and blisters and dead skin from my general mistreatment, so they feel really good now.
Thanks Caroline!
Big concerns. I’m kind of glad I am not doing this one alone. At least if I crap out, my companion can go for help.